The present invention relates to a system and method for automatically determining and then delivering, based on the weight of an animal and type of medicine, an amount of medicine optimal for the animal.
The regular and accurate administration of medicine to animals such as hogs and cattle is critical to the physical health of the animals, the resulting quality of the food products the animals deliver, and the sense of confidence the consumer has in the wholesomeness of those food products. These concerns are equally prevalent in both the cattle and hog industries, so it will be understood and appreciated that the following references to cattle, made for illustrative simplicity, are equally applicable to hogs and all other food animals.
In cattle, vast numbers of different, complex medicinal regimens have been developed and implemented in an effort to generate healthier animals that produce a safe, higher quality and quantity of beef. Because slaughtered beef is valued, in significant part, on its quality characteristics, and because the premium paid for high quality beef is high, those raising cattle for profit remain in search of the optimum medical regimen. Furthermore, pharmaceutical companies almost blindly spend billions of dollars developing individual medicines without the opportunity or resources to conduct a large-scale, extended length individual animal-based field tests. Compounding the problem is the fact that current systems and methods of record keeping among cattle ranchers and pork producers fail to provide the kind and volume of high quantity, high integrity information about the effects of various medicines on individual animals that would alert pharmaceutical developers of the most likely avenues for future successful drug development. Additionally, the growing concerns by consumers over the residual effects of the application of these medical treatments (as they relate to food safety) are not satisfied by any present method or system for medical treatment tracking or accounting.
The life of a head of cattle, from calf to slaughter, is in the range of one to two years (the period is less for hogs). Even in this relatively short period of time, the numbers of medical treatments a particular animal may receive are numerous. Additionally, the numbers of head of cattle a cattleman must raise to be profitable is generally large. Even if a cattleman endeavors to be diligent in the recordation of medicines given to individual cattle in his herd, the logistics of keeping such records make the task nearly impossible. First, animals as big as cattle are generally unappreciative of being stuck with the rather large needles typically used to inject medicines. Outweighed by a factor of three, four or five, the cattleman faces a battle just to deliver the injection. In addition to the physical struggle of man vs. animal, the conditions in many feedlots can be brutally inhospitable, especially in colder months and in the less temperate regions where cattle are typically raised. Finally, many cattle operations operate on tight profit margins, making the cost of additional labor for recording and maintaining recorded data (which may or may not have a positive effect on the price of the end product) prohibitive. Given these impediments, it is nearly impossible for a cattleman to simultaneously and accurately record information relevant to medicines and the animals the medicines are given to.
Numerous advances in the medicine delivery systems have helped cattlemen gain increased control over the historically chaotic task of administering medicines to animals. Notably, U.S. Pat. No. 5,961,494, which is specifically incorporated herein by reference, the inventor of which is also the inventor herein, discloses a marking syringe which, when actuated, simultaneously injects medicine into an animal and places a mark on the skin of the animal in proximity to the location of the injection. This marking syringe (known commercially as the xe2x80x9cVAC-MARC(copyright)xe2x80x9d) cleverly reduces what was formerly a clumsy, two-step injecting and marking process into one stepxe2x80x94the actuation of the syringe. Nonetheless, a cattleman using the marking syringe taught by the ""494 patent and desiring to maintain records of injections would still have to somehow identify the animal and then manually record the fact that that particular animal had been injected.
Beyond the logistics of injecting and marking an animal, proper identification and dosage of the animal is also important. In this regard, the leading system is described in pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/477,262 (specifically incorporated herein by reference and previously filed by the inventor herein), which teaches the principals of the commercially available VAC-TRAC(trademark) system, available through AgEcom Corp. of Marietta, Ga., 1-800-793-1671. The VAC-TRAC(trademark) system successfully and innovatively incorporates automatic recordation of animal injection information with animal identification information. Unfortunately, however, even the state-of-the-art VAC-TRAC(trademark) system is unable to deliver, in real-time, different dosages of medicines to different animals based on automatically determining the weight of the animal and automatically adjusting the dosage accordingly.
Accordingly, there is a need for a system and method in which information relating to the administration of medicines to animals can be automatically accessed and implemented in the process of delivery of the medicines to the animals, then recorded for access and review after delivery. There is a further need for a system and method of combining and coordinating these automatic features with the automatic recordation of animal identification data. A still further need exists for a system and method for accomplishing the aforementioned needs and reliably and automatically recording the resulting information in a location and format in which it can be later used in the improved development of animal food products such as beef.
The present invention relates to a system and method for automatically controlling the quantitative delivery of, and then recording the occurrence of the administration of medicines to animals. An intelligent syringe receives and automatically implements an instruction relating to a preferred quantity of medicine to be delivered to a specific animal, based on the measured weight of the animal. Upon actuation of the intelligent syringe, a first signal containing information relating to the actuation of the intelligent syringe, and the resulting injection of the animal is transmitted to a data repository.
An EID/RFID is attached to the animal to provide a tamper-resistant electronic identification of the animal, and a receiver is utilized for receiving the first signal from the intelligent syringe and the electronic identification of the animal. Thereafter, a computer database maintains the information contained in the first signal for selective access and analysis.